Is it bad...

That I use Sindarin for IC purposes rather than Thalassian because the former is vastly superior in terms of development and structure?

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

- Thucydides

There is a modern myth that people have always tended towards democracy, constitutions, electoral rights; but in truth, love of freedom has never been the predominant note of popular politics. At most times, popular demand has been for a strong government.

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

- Thucydides

There is a modern myth that people have always tended towards democracy, constitutions, electoral rights; but in truth, love of freedom has never been the predominant note of popular politics. At most times, popular demand has been for a strong government.

But Tolkien isn't WoW and there's enough of a difference between the two languages to say that it's not right as far as trying to roleplay in a proper sense.

The problem is that with a complete lack of grammatical rules, let alone a decent corpus of vocabulary, it is impossible to work with Thalassian even for things like names.

Thalassian, by and large, is just a rip of Quenya anyway in terms of appearance.

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

- Thucydides

There is a modern myth that people have always tended towards democracy, constitutions, electoral rights; but in truth, love of freedom has never been the predominant note of popular politics. At most times, popular demand has been for a strong government.

Do note that I never stated that Thalassian was a better language, merely that it is the canon language, as broken as it is. In terms of strict adherence to lore, using a Tolkien-created language is against canon and therefore shouldn't be used.

If Thalassian and Quenya are pretty similar languages, to the point where you can say one is a rip-off of the other, then I'd say it's fair to use in my opinion... on two conditions:

1) You realize that you are in the realm of speculation, thus be prepared to change things if you are proven wrong.

2) You don't really have any facts to back up what you say as being true elvish.

My next character to roll. Brilliant! I knew we kept you around for a reason.

Cranial ridges gave it away or what?

---------- Post added 2012-11-25 at 03:03 AM ----------

Originally Posted by The Madgod

Do note that I never stated that Thalassian was a better language, merely that it is the canon language, as broken as it is. In terms of strict adherence to lore, using a Tolkien-created language is against canon and therefore shouldn't be used.

If Thalassian and Quenya are pretty similar languages, to the point where you can say one is a rip-off of the other, then I'd say it's fair to use in my opinion... on two conditions:

1) You realize that you are in the realm of speculation, thus be prepared to change things if you are proven wrong.

2) You don't really have any facts to back up what you say as being true elvish.

If you can accept those two terms then go to town!

The issue is mainly from a vocabulary standpoint; given that the corpus of Thalassian words is so limited I have to coin bastardized names for races, places, etc.

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

- Thucydides

There is a modern myth that people have always tended towards democracy, constitutions, electoral rights; but in truth, love of freedom has never been the predominant note of popular politics. At most times, popular demand has been for a strong government.

Be that as it may, what I've stated is basically everything there is on the subject in terms of the roleplaying community. The specific issues you might have with the language are yours to deal with after you understand what your general actions mean and how others will react to them. Like I said if you can accept that you have literally nothing to back up your claims that the words you use from a Tolkien language are Thalassian and that what work you've done with that language could potentially be overturned by Blizzard expanding lore, then feel free to do whatever.

I just wanted to ask in what setting do you use Sindarin? In a Forum based roleplay for effect, so that people may/have to translate themselves? Or ingame instead of the built in Thalassin parser? I just don't really see a striking need for it, and one could argue that the depth/atmosphere you gain by using an actual language is lost to the fact that it is in the wrong universe. For me personally if I read some handwritten elvish in which I would discover elfish terms I remember from the Tolkien universe it would break the immersion more than it would help it.

Well i use (minor) latin for roleplaying a priest, but i believe that is not a huge case. However i think, using a non-cannon language totally out of the fantasy setting you are rping in, is something else.

Well, technically, Latin is as much out of canon as Sindarin is. I don't remember any "scholar language" existing in the Warcraft universe.
In the setting of DSA, a german Pen and Paper, Latin is indeed an in-universe scholar language called Bosparano. That's the only fair use of Latin I could imagine. Also I would rather object with latin being a clerical language in World of Warcraft, while the connection to christianity is there, it is never explicitly given. I would even go further and say while a god was mentioned in early warcraft sometimes it has changed to the sole usage of "the Light". So using latin would break the immersion for me again. Also, I never had the pleasure to learn Latin, and If I would play a character that is a scholar and wouldn't be able to reply that would also massively interfere with my roleplay. Same goes for an elf that can't make any sense of Sindarin, or his/her supposed language. I see more drawbacks then benefits here.

And while I'm objecting to the use of those languages, I really would love to see the in game languages being somewhat speakable. Then again they would have to do ALL of them or the drama would be astronomical "Why did you do "language A instead of language B ?" IIRC Tolkien was lecturing linguistics in some form so he knew what he was doing when he developed his languages, but doing that for a ton of ingame languages is just not feasable, sadly.